Posts Tagged ‘Eircom’

Second time lucky? S’pore Inc trying its luck (with our money) at the roulette wheel again?

I’ll let the FT tell the tale:

GIC, the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, plans to buy a large minority stake in Irish telecoms group Eir, in a deal that is expected to value the former state monopoly provider at more than €3.3bn.

And

The Eir deal would mark the second time in less than a decade that a Singaporean investment fund has taken an interest in Eir, which has been traded between investors and debt holders in a convoluted series of deals and flotations over the 16 years since it was privatised.

In 2012, the senior lenders of Eircom took control of the Irish group following a restructuring of its €4bn of debt, which slashed about €1.7bn of borrowing from its balance sheet but also wiped out the previous shareholders including Singapore Technologies Telemedia (STT) — owned by Singaporean investment arm Temasek — and all the more junior levels of debt holders.

But it was also reported last week by the wires that Eircom applied for court protection as expected last to allow it to restructure its 3.75 billion euro (S$6.29 billion) debt, a move it said was “necessary and unavoidable”.

The application follows the company’s agreement to support a proposal under which most senior lenders take control of the company from current majority shareholder ST Telemedia and cut its debt by 40 to 50%.

Well the Communist Party and Government in Vietnam are not so forgiving of executives who goof. Nine top officials have been given tough jail sentences for their role in the near-bankruptcy of one of Vietnam’s largest state-owned companies. Err they were convicted of being directly responsible for a loss of US$43m http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17561109. Peanuts when compared to Euros 140m.

BTW, came across this comment about Merrill Lynch recently, “From July 2007 to July 2008, a total of [US]$19.2 billion vaporized – or [US}$52 million in losses per day!” For the record, Temasek bot into ML in December 2007 and in late July 2008.http://moneymorning.com/2008/07/29/merrill-lynch/